Zaïre was the first play in which French characters appeared upon the tragic stage. The heroine, the daughter of Lusignan, has been brought up, unconscious of her descent, in the Mahometan faith and usage. Consider the philosophy of these lines which are given to her: La coutume, la loi plia mes premiers ans A la religion des heureux musulmans. Je le vois trop; les soins qu’on prend de notre enfance Ferment nos sentimens, nos mœurs, notre croyance. J’eusse été près du Gange esclave des faux dieux, Chrétienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux. L’instruction fait tout; et la main de nos pères Grave en nos faibles cœurs ces premiers caractères, Que l’exemple et le temps nous viennent retracer, Et que peut-être en nous Dieu seul peut effacer.[107] This of course implied the doctrine of Pope’s Universal Prayer, and contains an idea that was always the favourite weapon for smiting the over-confident votaries of a single supernatural revelation. Locke had asked whether ‘the current opinions and licensed guides of every country are sufficient evidence and security to every man to venture his great concernments on? Or, can these be the certain and infallible oracle and standards of truth which teach one thing in Christendom, and another in Turkey? Or shall a poor countryman be eternally happy for having the chance to be born in Italy? Or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost because he had the ill-luck to be born in England?[108] This was exactly the kind of reasoning to which Zaïre’s lines pointed; and Voltaire was never weary of arguing that the divine lay outside of the multitudinous variety of creeds that were never more than local accidents. Neither, however, in Zaïre nor anywhere else is the law of perfect dramatic fitness violated for the sake of a lesson in heterodoxy. With Voltaire tragedy is, as all art ought to be, a manner of disinterested presentation. This is not the noblest energy of the human intelligence, but it is truly art, and Voltaire did not forget it. It would be entirely unprofitable to enter into any comparison of the relative merits of Voltaire’s tragedies, and those either of the modern romantic school in his own country, or of the master dramatists of our own. Every form of composition must be judged in its own order, and the order in which Voltaire chose to work was the French classic, with its appointed conditions and fixed laws, its three unities, its stately alexandrines, and all the other essentials of that special dramatic form. Here is one of the many points at which we feel that Voltaire is trying to prolong in literature, if not in thought, the impressive tradition of the grand age. At the same moment, strangely enough, he was giving that stir to the opinion of his time, which was the prime agent in definitely breaking the hold of that tradition. It is no infidelity to the glorious and incomparable genius of Shakespeare, nor does it involve any